UNITY: Journalists of Color

UNITY was started more than 20 years ago when Juan Gonzalez, a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and Will Sutton, a member of the National Association of Black Journalists, began talking and realized that they had much in common. From their discussions, they came up with the idea of UNITY, an organization that joins four national associations: the Asian American Journalists Association, the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and the Native American Journalists Association. In 1994, UNITY: Journalists of Color Inc. became a “permanent, nonprofit, strategic” group of journalists of all different nationalities joining together to further themselves in this crazy news industry.

The mission of UNITY is to encourage fair and accurate news coverage about people of color”, and also to encourage diversity in newsrooms across the country. Other goals of UNITY include “increasing representation of people of color at all levels of the news industry, broadening news coverage focusing on people of color, to dispel racial and ethnic stereotypes and myths, and to become the leading organization advocating for multiculturalism in the media”.

This is a unique organization not only for that reason, but also for the reason that these four associations have to work together in order to achieve a common goal, no matter how different they are. UNITY is an important organization to the media world because it bodies not only one, but four culturally diverse groups of journalists.

For more information go to http://unityjournalists.org/.